Yes, Kathy Hochul has the authority to remove New York City Mayor Eric Adams from power, but should she?
Longtime Democratic strategist James Carville should take his own good advice.
In a Monday interview with MSNBC’s Ari Melber, Carville addressed the growing apprehension on his side of the aisle over the Democratic Party’s failure to mount an emotionally gratifying resistance to the Trump administration. Even though the party’s strategic lethargy is unsatisfying, Carville advised his co-partisans to hold the line. Just “play possum,” he said. “Don’t get in the way of it. Or, as we like to say, Don’t just stand there, do nothing. Let this germinate.”
In that same interview, however, Carville abandoned this caution when it came to the scandal surrounding the Justice Department’s conspicuously lax treatment of New York City Mayor Eric Adams. It was both within Governor Kathy Hochul’s power to remove Adams from office, he said, and justified by the likelihood that he will not face justice for the alleged corruption charges against him. “I’m sorry, the governor of New York is a dolt,” Carville added. “Why she doesn’t get that guy out of there pronto, I have no idea.”
Carville’s remarks are probably indicative of the sentiments toward Adams across the Democratic spectrum, and Hochul is feeling the heat. On Monday, her office said the resignations prompted by the Adams scandal, including that of First Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer, “raises serious questions about the long-term future” of Adams’s mayoralty. She will meet with “key leaders” in Manhattan today to discuss the “path forward” for the city.
What will it take for Democrats to recognize that imperious interventions into processes that voters believe should be determined by political outcomes never work out in their favor? Yes, Hochul has the authority to remove Adams from power, but should she? The governor did not pull that trigger when Adams was indicted. It is not as though the evidence prosecutors provided to substantiate the allegation that the Adams administration had been cartoonishly contemptuous of the law was flimsy. Her deference to legal technicalities stayed Hochul’s hand.
The Trump DOJ’s order withdrawing those charges without prejudice is no less scandalous than the claims against Adams’s administration. Still, it, too, is part of the legal process — as are the resignations it has inspired. More importantly, the firestorm it has ignited is just as much a part of the American political process. Hochul’s intervention into it would shift the public’s attention away from Adams and Trump and toward Democrats, lending credence in paranoid sectors of the political economy to the Adams administration’s self-serving claims that Hochul’s party is only interested in preventing elected officials from robustly enforcing immigration law.
Democrats shouldn’t need to be reminded of their own deficiencies when it comes to strategic forecasting. Even if you’re persuaded that Trump’s evasive conduct with FBI officials (and the evidence law enforcement later produced justifying their apprehension) warranted the 2022 search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property, the “raid” produced a political scandal. Pluralities told pollsters they thought the search and seizure operation was an outgrowth of Democratic political objectives. Republicans rallied around Trump, with some convincing themselves that the investigation justified scrapping the 2024 GOP primaries altogether and renominating Trump by acclimation. Trump was never unpopular among Republican voters, but the event that kicked off a campaign of lawfare against the former president papered over his political liabilities and set the stage for Trump’s restoration to power.
Adams inspires nothing like that sort of affection either among Democrats or the Republicans with whom he is obsequiously attempting to ingratiate himself. Be it Adams, Rod Blagojevich, or Bob Menendez — corrupt Democrats seem to know that obsequious appeals of fealty to Trump and his movement can get them an (all but literal) get-out-of-jail-free card. That’s a scandal — one that builds on the public’s overall distaste for Trump’s misuse of the pardon power. Governor Hochul can only arrest a process that could culminate in an organic backlash against Trump’s peculiar definition of “weaponization” by making herself the star of the show and overturning an outcome, however ill-considered, that the city’s residents voted for in 2021.
Hochul should take James Carville’s advice and ignore James Carville. The voters will have their say soon enough.